Visiting boss explains how Newcastle 3 Brentford 1 happened

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Once normally lethal striker (13 goals in last 14 Championship matches) Scott Hogan headed over the bar in the opening stages, there was only going to be one winner.

By the time we hit the 16 minute mark Newcastle were two up, paving the way for the eventual 3-1 scoreline.

Visiting Head Coach Dean Smith summed up the task he feels other clubs will have against Newcastle United this season: ‘It just shows how big this football club is, to have 52,000 people here and players like Gayle and Jonjo Shelvey’ but claimed they cam with a game plan that could have worked.

However, Smith feels that Brentford gave away two bad goals to gift the game to Newcastle, saying ‘With the quality they have, they don’t really need a helping hand’.

Maybe the story of the match was that at key times it was Newcastle who had the quality.

Dean Smith:

“With the quality they have, they don’t really need a helping hand, but unfortunately we’ve given them a very big one one with the two goal lead. A lack of concentration and lack of discipline you could call it I suppose.

“They get a free kick on the edge of the box, we half clear it and four or five of our lads think it has been cleared, which opens up the middle of our goal for a free header. It’s disappointing because we’re not renowned for that, defensively we’re normally very good.

“It was a poor goal and I thought we had started the game okay. They turned the ball over a couple of times and Lewis Macleod has looked to put in Scott Hogan) then Maxime Colin got in and crossed to Scott but his timing on the header was just off, which would have given us a great start.

“Then they put a ball over the top, we have a bit of a mix up and the ball’s headed back to Dwight Gayle on the penalty spot, who’s made it 2-0, and it’s an uphill task from there. It was very uncharacteristic, and that’s what was disappointing about it.

“For the third goal we gave it away on the edge of their penalty area, didn’t recover quick enough, and they went through and scored. Our reaction to that was good, with a well worked set piece goal, but while we had good spells of pressure, it was nothing sustained.

“We came here with a game plan but when you concede goals like that, the game plan goes out of the window.

“There’s a lot of pace in their team, which made it hard to go and press as high as we would have liked to.

“To be fair to the lads though, there was a lot of good things as well, and we competed well enough.

“It just shows how big this football club is, to have 52,000 people here and players like Gayle and Jonjo Shelvey, but we felt we could compete with them.”